


do not mistake my grace for weakness

by xiomarisol



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 12k angst extravaganza, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, But at its core it's about the Gang, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, and about cheryl and her journey to acceptance, choni-centric, conversion therapy but make it last more than one episode, it's dark i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiomarisol/pseuds/xiomarisol
Summary: "Briefly, I entertain the fantasy of reaching over the counter and begging this woman to save me from my mother, even though I know she can’t. Instead, I smile back at her. I mutter a “thank you.” And I walk back to where my mother waits in the driver’s seat of my car, waiting to make me disappear."-or, cheryl is sent to the sisters of quiet mercy, where she meets toni.
Relationships: (past) Cheryl Blossom/Heather, (unrequited) Cheryl Blossom/Josie McCoy, Betty Cooper/Veronica Lodge, Cheryl Blossom & Veronica Lodge & Toni Topaz & Kevin Keller & Betty Cooper, Cheryl Blossom/Toni Topaz
Comments: 17
Kudos: 85





	do not mistake my grace for weakness

**Author's Note:**

> TW: homophobia (lots of it), electroshock therapy, mentions of non-con and suicide attempts (but they're mild)

The drive is short and silent. We stop only to get gas and a bottle of Cherry Cola, the kind that comes in a glass bottle. The woman behind the register must recognize me—must have heard the whispers about the girl who lost a brother, lost a father, lost her sanity in the aftermath—because she gives me a sympathetic and fearful smile. I should be used to being looked at like this, with how long it’s been since Jason died (was killed, I remind myself), but the glares never fail to make a home under my skin.

Briefly, I entertain the fantasy of reaching over the counter and begging this woman to save me from my mother, even though I know she can’t. Instead, I smile back at her. I mutter a “thank you.” And I walk back to where my mother waits in the driver’s seat of my car, waiting to make me disappear.

By the time we arrive at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, we’ve passed the Northside, the Southside, and made it to what looks like an abandoned hospital in a part of Riverdale I’ve never seen. Something ugly falls to the pit of my stomach when I realize that there isn’t another house or store for miles. This is nowhere. The only neighbors we have for miles are trees and birds and hay bales and the wide expanse of sky. I try not to think about what’s going to happen to me, or if I’ll ever make it out of here, and instead replay my last night with Josie in my mind.

I remember how she was so beautiful. How she sang and the birds fell quiet. How when we slept, her chest rose and fell to the same rhythm that mine did. I don’t think about the drawings. I don’t think about how everything fell apart.

My body shivers involuntarily when my mother hands me my suitcase. She packed it herself, so I know my sketchbooks will be missing. I wonder if she packed Jason’s varsity jacket, the one I’ve been wearing to bed every night since Josie stopped talking to me, but I know I won’t like the answer. I take it from her and make my way to the front of the building, not bothering to say goodbye even though something inside me knows I’ll never see her again.

A nun is waiting for me at the entrance of the property. The place is big. I wonder how I’ve never seen it before. But of course, places like this don’t want to be found. It almost looks like a boarding school, from up close, with rows upon rows of windows going three stories high. I think I see a face peering out at me from one of them, but when I look up again, it doesn’t come back.

The nun reaches out to me and holds my right hand between both of hers. Her blue eyes gaze intensely into mine and I fight the urge to tear my eyes away. This feels like a test. I have a feeling it’s the first of many I’ll face here.

“Hello, Cheryl. We’ve been waiting for you.” She takes my suitcase from my grasp and wheels it forward, “We’ll have to check the contents of this. Standard procedure. I’m Sister Woodhouse, I run your program. I’ll be helping you get back on the righteous path.”

The inside of the place doesn’t look like a boarding school at all. It’s a prison. I give my name to a boy whose hands won’t stop shaking. He’s mousey and nervous looking, although underneath the gauntness of his face there’s an echo of someone who would’ve been attractive on the outside. My hands start shaking too when I see that there are track marks on the inside of his wrists. Part of me wants to tell him that this is a mistake, that I’m not like this, to call my mother and tell her to pick me up. But I know it’s no use. She’s already left.

When he finishes typing and looks up from the computer, he says, “My name is Moose. Don’t be scared, this program will be good for you, Cheryl. It helped me. I used to—I used to struggle, too. But I’m almost out. I’m seeing a nice girl here, Midge, and we’re going to get married when she completes the program. I’m going to go back to the ROTC program at school, like I wanted to, before, you know. Before everything.”

I don’t respond. I can’t say anything. The truth is I’m scared to become like him, a shaking, empty husk of who I used to be before. I’m scared I’m already there. Scared I’ve been there since July 4th when I rowed Jason across the river to what would become his death. Whenever I think about Jason, I get the urge to close my eyes and stop breathing until I forget the memory of him and all I can think about is what it is to breathe.

Moose hands me a dress, a cardigan, and some slip-on shoes—blue and red, the opposite colors of his own outfit—and I snap back to reality. “You’re all good to go, just go get dressed and I’ll show you to where you need to go.”

Turns out that where I need to go is a small, double room on the bottom floor of the building. The doors are metal, and the ground reeks of mildew, but I try to hold my breath. Sister Woodhouse opens the door, “This is your roommate.”

A remark about how giving us same-sex roommates is a recipe for disaster sits on my tongue, but I bite it back, because then they might put me in a single room and then I’d really be alone. There’s a girl with dark hair and eyes on the bed staring at the wall. She’s dressed in the exact same outfit as me, but her hair is pulled into two childish pigtails.

I don’t know this girl, but I still have to hold back a sob when I make eye contact with her. Her eyes look vacant, like pictures I’ve seen of places where meteorites have fallen, empty craters shaped like the thing that struck them. She’s looking behind me, at Sister Woodhouse, who looks like she wants to say something but shakes her head, thinking better of it. She leaves and closes the door behind her with a simple, “Group is at eight tomorrow. Do not be late.”

When she’s gone, the girl smiles and winks at me, eyes sparkling and wide.

“Sorry for freaking you out. If I act like I’ve been lobotomized the nuns bother me less. Or else they make me sit and talk to them, or worse, the doctor”—she says this with an inflection, as if the doctor is something evil in disguise—“Edgar, who seems like an actual serial killer. I’m Veronica.”

Veronica. I wonder if she’s in here because she’s like me. I assume all of the kids in here are, but I can’t be sure, and I don’t want to ask in case she’s not and hates me, reacts the way my mother did when she heard the word _lesbian._ The thought of it makes me throat and ribs ache with phantom bruises, so I swallow the question.

“I’m Cheryl.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s small, shy, quiet in a way Cheryl Blossom has never been. I try to square my shoulders, try to push my chin up, try to embody the Bombshell I was before the bomb exploded on me and I was left empty.

“What are you here for?” She asks, and my blood rushes to my ears. _Deviant girl,_ my mother’s voice floats above my own thoughts, and I grip the metal behind my bed.

“I fell in love with the wrong person.” I answer, and Veronica’s dark eyes flit downwards, suddenly resembling the girl I saw when I first walked in here.

“Me, too.” She says, so quietly that I wouldn’t have heard it if it weren’t for the overwhelming silence that falls over our room. Then she looks up, eyes wide and bright again and corrects herself, “It’s never wrong when you fall in love. The issue is what comes after.”

‘Group’ is really eight chairs arranged in a circle, with a single chair for Sister Woodhouse in the middle of it. Anxiety rises up in my chest and I think about bolting. Veronica must catch the look in my eye because she places a light, imperceptible hand on my back and pushes me forward.

Sister Woodhouse explains that we must all confess to our sins in front of the group. That admitting to them will help us get back on the righteous path to who Jesus wants us to be. That this is the only way we can rid ourselves of the unnatural desires that Satan has placed into us.

Midge, a petite girl with a pixie cut, is prompted to speak first. “Well, my sin… I mean—I was on the cheerleading squad. And, well, in the locker rooms I’d be around all of these changing girls, which didn’t really help, so…”

I wonder if she means it. She must know that being gay is innate. That no matter how many changing girls straight girls see, they’ll still be straight. Which means that she was gay before she ever stepped into that changing room.

“And was that where you sinned?” Sister Woodhouse asks.

“Yes. One of my teammates, Tina. We spent a lot of time together. Another girl on the team found out and told my dad.”

“And thank God that she did, right?” Midge nods, small and controlled, “Because thanks to her you were able to get to us and realize that what you were doing was an affront to God, and now that you’re here with us you’ve been able to accept Jesus into your heart and start dating a nice young man, Moose.”

Midge’s arms fall to her sides. Even though Moose is seated right across from her, she doesn’t look at him. The boy next to me—a handsome, flamboyant boy—nudges my side and whispers, “Dating my ass. Moose stood outside my door for weeks when I first got here. Her, though, I think she plays both sides.”

Sister Woodhouse turns and glares at him, but he just gives her an innocent-looking, all-lip smile until she’s forced to turn around.

The boy’s name is Kevin. He’s the only one I’ve met here who seems to be as outwardly gay and unapologetic about it as someone would be on the outside. Later he’ll tell me that his mother died when he was young. That his father is a sheriff, a real man’s man, who didn’t know how to raise a son on his own. When he talks about it, it sounds like his father doesn’t actually have a problem with him being gay except that he feels like it’s his fault for not raising him right. That he thinks, in his own misguided way, that this is going to make Kevin’s life easier.

Veronica’s next. She sits up straight, maintaining the stubborn grin of a girl who cares about nothing. On the outside, she might’ve been like me: an HBIC. In here, she’s just another sad gay girl pretending to be something she could never be.

“I fell in love with a girl.” She looks at the popcorn ceiling, refusing to make eye contact with Sister Woodhouse. “She was my best friend. I loved her like more than one. Then her mother saw us. That was it.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and juts out her chin, daring Sister Woodhouse to challenge her. And she does, answering, “But you know that it’s wrong, right? That you’ve committed a sin?”

Veronica’s arms fall to her sides and the vacant look takes over her again. I recognize this coping mechanism. I’ve perfected it myself, the art of retreating into yourself, balling your fists until your knuckles turn white, being anywhere else but where you are right now. I learned how to do this in kindergarten, when my mother recognized that I’d never be the kind of Blossom I needed to be and starting beating me into the shape she wanted me to take.

The girl next to Veronica looks protectively over at her. I wonder if they’re friends. I wonder if they’re more than that. (If that’s a possibility, here.) Her skin is a delicate shade of brown, her eyes big, and her hair tinted with pastel streaks of pink. She speaks up, drawing the attention off Veronica, “It’s my turn, right?”

Next to me, Kevin snickers, and Sister Woodhouse lets out a breath through her nose, but answers, “Yes, Antoinette, it is.”

“Well,” She starts, in a strong and unrelenting voice, “I sinned as much as I could, with anyone I could. They actually called me the bisexual Don Juan back home.”

Kevin sniffs, a laugh. When Sister Woodhouse turns towards him, he hides it in the crook of his elbow, faking a hacking cough. She forges on, “Yeah. I loved doing it with girls. Boys too, but mostly girls. There was this girl, I called her Peaches ‘cause she tasted so sweet, if you know what I mean.”

This time Kevin can’t conceal his laugh. Sister Woodhouse glares at him. “Antoinette, keep it going please.”

“Yeah, well, me and Peaches, we liked doing it everywhere. School, the parking lot, the park. Of course, we got found out. It’s surprising it took so long. Her ex-boyfriend found us and told my uncle. He was probably just pissed his girlfriend dumped him for me.”

Slowly, Kevin starts to clap. Sister Woodhouse shushes him and turns to Antoinette with an expression that makes my heart sink to the soles of my shoes. Her eyes burn even though they aren’t pointed at me. She starts to speak, says that Antoinette is “a sinner, unholy, deviant.”

I feel my face burn hot with shame. I don’t know what to do, so I look at my hands. Everyone else is staring at Sister Woodhouse, silent, as she tells Antoinette that she’s going to rot in hell, be consumed in brimstone and fire for all eternity with all of the murderers and rapists and sinners like her. Even though I’ve never been religious, I start to get a little queasy.

When Sister Woodhouse is done with her speech, Antoinette looks up with a wolfish hungry grin and says, “See you there, sister. You and the rest of the hags who like to torture children in the name of the lord.”

Even though I haven’t been here for long, I know she’s said the wrong thing when I catch Veronica’s fearful stare. This is the part of the horror movie where it all starts to go south. Sister Woodhouse walks towards Antoinette, and I’m expecting her to yank her out of her chair and drag her away, but she just places a hand on her shoulder. Everyone else seems to know what this means, because they look away when she walks out of the room.

A fearful feeling has settled in the pit of my stomach and made a home there. Veronica doesn’t speak on the walk back to our room. I want to ask her if Antoinette is her something. I want to ask her where they’ve taken her and if she’ll be back. But I don’t want to know if it’s what I’m thinking it might be.

All I really want is to see Josie. She doesn’t even need to talk to me. I try to imagine what she looked like the night of Nick’s party, how she held me close and wiped my tears with her fingertips and told me she loved me. I didn’t answer her then. I think she thought I was just too overwhelmed with the Nick situation, but really, I was scared she’d hear me say the words and realize I didn’t mean them the way she did.

That was the only thing that was certain. The fact that one day I’d be found out and the girl I’d molded myself to be would dissolve into something my mother could never tolerate, much less love.

When we get back to our room, Kevin is waiting at the door. He smiles, too brightly, when he sees us, eyes flitting around as if he’s checking to see if someone else is there. Veronica looks at him and steps right into his arms.

“Oh, Ronnie.” He says, a hand coming up to stroke her hair. “Let’s get you to bed.”

Veronica falls asleep like a child, curled up on her side as Kevin plays with her hair. Once she’s asleep, I look at Kevin and ask, “Are she and Antoinette… you know?”

He laughs lightly, “Toni. The only one who calls her Antoinette is Sister Woodhouse because she thinks calling her Toni is going to turn her gayer. And no, they’re not.”

“But…” I gesture towards Veronica.

“She has someone. The girl she talked about in group, Betty, she was here before. But she was moved to the top floor so they don’t really see each other now, except when we can manage to sneak up there, which is almost never.” Kevin looks tenderly down at Veronica and I wonder how long they’ve both been here, to build a bond like that. “When she left, Veronica stopped speaking for a while. Took it really hard. Toni and I look out for her.”

“Oh.” I say as I sit on my hands for something to do. I worry my lip between my teeth, looking for the right words to ask about what I want to know. “And Toni… where…”

“She’ll be back.” Kevin avoids the question. This makes my stomach turn. “She likes to get mouthy with the nuns, so they like to send her to do some manual labor. It doesn’t stop her.”

As it turns out, manual labor means lifting heavy sandbags. Each one must weigh about twenty pounds, and we’re supposed to carry them across the room until the Sisters decide we’ve had enough. There is no point to this “exercise” beyond tiring our physical bodies; it’s as if they want to exhaust the gay out of us, tire us into submission.

I pick up the first sandbag, trying not to outwardly show the pain of its weight in my arms, and walk as proudly as I can manage to the other side of the room. I’ve grown a good amount of muscle from being on the Vixens back home, but this is still exhausting. I don’t want the Sisters to see the sweat on my face or the way my arms shake. I don’t want them to think they’re winning.

When I move all of mine to the left side of the room, I look at the Sister—a stout, short woman whose name I don’t remember—in hopes that she’ll allow me to lie down, maybe grab some water. Instead, she says, “You were supposed to move them to the right side, Cheryl.”

“What? No, you said—”

“If you want to get better, Cheryl, you’re going to need to learn to _listen._ ”

I start the long and terrible task of carrying the sandbags back across the room. The others are watching me silently now. My arms ache so badly I think they’re in danger of splitting open, but I don’t allow myself to grimace, scared that the Sisters will see my pain and exploit it for weakness.

By the time I’m picking up my last sandbag, I think my moving will never end, that I’ll die with my arms splintered by my sides and that even in my death I’ll be carrying the weight of the sand. I take one step, and then another, and I keep going until I make it to the other side of the room, where my vision dissolves into nothing.

Before I wake up, I see Josie’s face and forget where I am for a few moments. I think it’s a normal morning, one of the ones we had after sleepovers when she could still look at me and see a friend, somebody she could love. She’s sitting at the edge of my four-poster bed with two mugs of steaming coffee. She reaches out to hand me the coffee, but her hands can’t reach me because I am moving backwards, away from her. I try to pull myself forward, but the more I exert myself the more that I sink into nothingness.

I wake up gasping, like I always do when I have too-vivid dreams. I can’t remember what happened, only that I fell, and I think I hit my head. I remember the Sister’s arms around my shoulders, pulling me up. Somebody in nurses’ scrubs carrying me. Then nothing.

Then someone is there, sitting next to me, and they’re asking me if I’m okay.

Toni, I remember. “Hey.”

“Hi.” I answer. My throat feels scratchy and hoarse. I look around the room to try and see if I can find water but freak myself out when I realize I’m not in my room at all, but on a cot in a room that looks like a jail cell.

“Easy there.” Toni reaches forward as if she’s going to touch my face but thinks better of it and places her hand on my bed instead, “You gave everyone a good scare. Don’t do that again.”

I scoff, “Yeah, I’ll try not to over-exert myself the next time nuns yell at me to do so.”

Toni laughs, a breathy, easy sound, “You’ve got spunk, I see. I’m Toni.”

“I know. Veronica’s friend.”

“Yeah. She asked me to be here when you woke up. She would’ve come herself but Ronnie, you know, she can’t—she’s not all there most days.” Toni plays with her fingers and I fight the urge to reach out and still her hands with my own. “You’ve been out for about an hour. The others went to shower before dinner. You can stay here, if you want, and the nurses will bring you something to eat, but you’re cleared to go. Mostly dehydrated.”

“I want to leave.” I say, although I’m scared that with my legs and arms turned to jelly I won’t be able to walk. Something about the way I say it must set Toni off about what I really mean, that I want to not only leave this room but leave this place. She looks at me and gives me a sympathetic smile.

“It sucks less if you pretend it’s something else. I like to think of it as a big gay never-ending summer camp. Or an escape room. Or a video game where you’re running away from the nuns, gaining points the more you piss them off.”

“Is that why you do it so often?”

Toni laughs, “Partly. Mostly I just like to see Sister Woodhouse squirm. I’ve heard, you know, that she went through a similar program when she was young. That she’s dedicated her life to the Lord because she couldn’t fix herself enough to get married to a man.”

I scowl. It’s sad to think about, that she was once one of us. That they turned her into a monster like they might do to the rest of us. Toni senses that her story did nothing to cheer me up and tries a different approach, “It’ll be okay, you know. They can’t keep you here forever. All you have to do is remember that they’re the ones who are wrong. There’s nothing wrong with you. When I get out of here, I’m burning this place to the ground. Then I’m opening a club for kids like us, except it’s the opposite of the Sisters because we’re celebrated. It’ll play Lady Gaga and Queen all night long, and we’ll never stop dancing.”

Dinner starts off a somber affair.

There are canned vegetables and roasted potatoes, both slightly soggy, and a grilled chicken breast that’s just a little bit too dry. It tastes like the school lunches that Riverdale Elementary would serve to kids like Jughead who couldn’t bring their own.

Veronica can’t look at me for too long without whimpering like a puppy, and Toni spends the entire time trying to cheer her up with lame jokes. Kevin sits with us, as does a dark-haired boy that goes by Fangs, who attempts to cheer Veronica up through highly inappropriate sexual innuendos. That works a little better. By the end of dinner, Veronica almost seems normal.

I spend most of the time watching them interact. I see the easy way that Toni and Kevin laugh together. The way that Kevin and Fangs sit almost a foot apart but let the sides of their shoes touch under the table. How gentle they all treat Veronica, like a small, broken bird they’re trying to nurse back to health.

Again, I think about how long they must have known each other, to be like this, and an ugly thing takes hold of my chest. I don’t want to stay here. It’s been two days and I’m already on the brink. I look up and make eye contact with Toni, “Has anyone ever, you know, tried to leave?”

I’ve said the wrong thing. I know, because they all cast uneasy glances sideways, looking for the nuns and looking at Veronica, whose eyes grow wide and glossy with tears. I stumble over myself, looking for the words to apologize, but Fangs cuts me off, “People have tried. It’s better not to. You can’t get far unless you have a car, and it’s much worse if you get caught.”

At this, Veronica whimpers and I almost want to, too, when I realize that this means I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future, caught between the nothingness of days. One day I might forget all about the world outside of the Sisters of Quiet Mercy and know nothing except for shame and fear.

I figured out what I was when I was in eighth grade, with Heather.

Heather was all rough edges and scuffed knees, so it was a wonder that my mother allowed me to be friends with her at all. But her family, the Nguyens, were wealthy and well-respected in Riverdale. Her father was business partners with my own, before my mother found out about us and made their family move all the way to California, and that was a good enough reason to allow her to stay.

Our friendship had always existed in the precarious balance of secretly knowing that we were more than friends but never acknowledging it. Instead, we would talk about the boys in our school, the Reggies and the Chucks and the Archies, trying to convince each other and ourselves that one day we might actually be interested in them. We would whisper to each other at sleepovers, because that’s what straight girls did, we’d repeat our lies so many times that we almost believed we were the girls in our stories about ourselves.

We stopped telling the stories after we kissed for the first time.

It was a normal sleepover, for the most part, except the eighth-grade dance was coming up so we were expected to talk about it. It was the first one where boys and girls were actually going together. Reggie had asked me to go with him and Chuck had asked her. Now that we had dates there was the whole question of hand holding and kissing and dancing together.

When we talked about whether we’d kiss them or not, she got this weird look on her face, the same look that I’ve seen all kinds of different girls look at the leading man in Nicholas Sparks movies when the music swells. Then she put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me forward, pressing her soft lips to mine. I kissed her back in a way I wasn’t expecting to know how to, even though something fearful turned in my stomach. We pulled apart and Heather said, “There. Now we’ve both had our first kiss. And it doesn’t matter if it’s good with them.”

It wasn’t the last time. Even though we said we did it to practice for the boys, once we started kissing we stopped pretending to care about them, now that we knew how the alternative really felt. We didn’t do more than kiss, and once we were tired of it she’d fall asleep with her head on my chest and I’d wrap my arms around her so tightly that I could feel her heartbeat against my sternum. 

The porch, illuminated by one single flickering light, is unbearably silent this time of night. With the property around the Sisters shrouded in darkness, it seems like the nothingness goes on for miles and miles. I imagine myself bolting into it, disappearing back into the trail that brought me here, and never coming back. But I know Sister Woodhouse is right inside just waiting for me to misstep, so instead I dig my ankles into the bottoms of my shoes.

“Hey.” I hear a voice from behind me. “You alright?”

Toni sits down on the porch next to me, leaving a good half-foot of space between us. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted some air.”

Today was rough. The Sisters had us run laps around the property, over and over and over again until we passed out or threw up. In group, Moose admitted to thinking about holding hands with a boy and the Sisters withheld dinner from him as a punishment. Sister Grump, which is what I’ve taken to calling the short, mean woman who made me carry sandbags, tore into me during group for refusing to share out about the sins I’ve committed.

“How are you holding up?”

I shrug, “I’ve been better. I’ve been worse.”

“Yeah. The first few days are the hardest. The nuns really tear into you. It’s not too bad, really, later. You get used to it.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Three months.” Toni says, slowly, like she can’t remember what her life was like three months ago, when she wasn’t here.

“Have you ever tried to leave?” I ask, looking over at the wide expanse of nothingness.

Toni flinches, and I regret asking the question at all. “No. Not after—Veronica and Betty tried to, about two months ago, I think. It was Betty’s idea. She knows how to pick locks, so they tried to get away in the middle of the night and make it back to Riverdale so they could tell Kevin’s dad to bail us out.”

“What happened?” I prod, even though I’m scared to hear the answer.

“They made it to the end of the road before Edgar found them. He was coming back from a supply run and they were right in front of his headlights. Betty took the fall for it, so they dragged her upstairs, and Veronica… well…”

“Upstairs?”

Toni picks at the skin around her fingernails. I can see that she’s nervous, but I still want her to answer. “That’s where they send the kids who don’t respond well to this phase of treatment. They come back, sometimes, like Moose, but they’re not the same.”

For the first time since I got here, I realize that I’m not going anywhere at all. I’m actually going to have to get through this. Embarrassingly, I start to cry.

Toni looks back at the window where Sister Woodhouse should be, guarding us to make sure we aren’t sinning, but must see nothing, because she turns back to me and pulls my hand from my lap, intertwining my fingers with her own.

I’m not getting out of speaking today, that much is clear in the way that Sister Woodhouse’s eyes bore into me when she says, “Cheryl, it’s your turn to share.”

When I speak, my voice shakes for reasons that I don’t entirely understand, “Um, well, a few months ago I started to have feelings for my best friend, Josie. We’d been friends for a while.” I trail off, blushing.

Sister Woodhouse smiles a predatory smile and leans forward, “Yes, your mother told us that this all started after a boy assaulted you at a party.”

My heart starts beating too fast as I remember that night with Nick, or what I can remember of it, anyway, and I can feel my cheeks flush with deep hear as everyone continues to look at me. I can’t believe my mother would tell them that. I wonder how much more they know, how much more they can use against me. I wonder if they know about Jason, about Thornhill, about my suicide attempt. I see Toni’s eyebrows furrow in concern. “Yeah. Nick. Josie saved me from him.”

“You have suffered many traumas, Cheryl. It seems that this one, having a man overstep your boundaries in this way, has corrupted your mind. You can no longer trust them, and the Devil senses that weakness, makes you believe that women can fill that void.” Sister Woodhouse walks around behind my chair and places her hands on my shoulders, “Admitting your sins is the first step towards fully healing. Eventually, Cheryl, this deviance of yours will feel like nothing more than a bad dream, and you’ll be able to have a normal life.”

I want to tell her that I’ve been gay for as long as I can remember, long before Nick drugged and tried to rape me. Instead, I nod, and swallow hard.

“Are you okay?” Veronica asks when we’re back in our room. “I’m sorry Sister Woodhouse made you talk.”

“Yeah.” I lie, “It’s okay.”

“Is it true?” She turns to me, “What she said about the boy?”

I think about lying again, scared that this might be too much for the girl’s already fragile mental state, but think better of it. She’s not a child. “Yes. It’s true. He drugged me at a party, but Josie got me out.”

Veronica runs her fingers through her dark hair, which is out of its usual pigtails and falls in soft waves around her face, “Is she waiting for you out there? Josie?”

I dig my fingernails into my palms. When Josie found my sketchbooks, with drawings upon drawings of her, she ran out on me. She yelled, asking for explanations that I didn’t have, couldn’t make up. I yelled behind her that I loved her. That it didn’t have to be this way. She said that it wasn’t love, what I felt for her, that it couldn’t be.

“No.” I tighten my fists, “She doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Veronica smiles sweetly, all lip and no teeth, and says, “But Toni will be glad to hear that.”

I do a double take. Stare back at her, where she’s still smiling at me. Eventually I settle on the fact that Veronica is a little out of her mind and I shouldn’t be taking anything she says too seriously. Part of me knows it’s a cop-out, but if I don’t force myself to believe this, I’ll have to think about what it means.

On Saturdays, the mail comes in. Mail from parents, friends, maybe even lovers on the outside who are waiting for us to be ‘cured’ so we can return to them. After breakfast, everyone runs to the mail room to collect their spoils before the nuns can open and read them. (Of course, they do anyways, but at least the kids get to be the first to see them). I stay in the cafeteria, not bothering to check my cubby which will undoubtedly be empty. I know that when my mother dropped me off here, it was never with the intention of picking me up, but rather letting me rot here until I was no longer her responsibility.

“No mail?” Toni sits across from me after dropping our plates in the sink.

“No.” I answer. “Nobody to send any. You?”

“Nah. My parents aren’t in the picture and my uncle hates me now, so…” Toni’s dark eyes dance downward. I want to reach out, hold my hand in her own, say that I’m sorry and I understand. But the fluttering in my stomach terrifies me because I know what it means, here. To seek this kind of love is to seek ruin.

So instead, I say, “I’m sorry. No friends out there?”

This makes her look even sadder than before, so I kick myself for asking her. I wonder if she’s like me. Unliked and unknown on the outside. “Yeah, some, but I haven’t heard from them since I disappeared. My grandpa, too. He’s older and can’t see so well now, so I don’t get letters from him… I don’t even really know if he knows I’m here.”

“My Nana Rose is half blind, too. She lives at home with my mother.” I smile, thinking of my Nana, who was a brief respite from the coldness of my mother. Not that she wasn’t plenty cold and a little senile on her own, but sometimes she’d sneak me treats as a kid or take me out gardening with her.

“Your mom’s the one who sent you here?” Toni asks. “I remember Sister Woodhouse mentioning her in group. I’m sorry about all that, by the way. It really wasn’t cool of her to bring that up.”

“Yeah.” I pick at the skin around my nails, “My mother’s a bit of a witch. She found out… about me… when I was in junior high. My best friend, Heather, I loved her. She loved me, too, I think. But my mother destroyed it. She said I was _deviant_.”

“Cheryl, I’m so sorry.” Toni touches her fingertips to mine, stilling my hands where my fingernails were picking into my skin, and intertwines our hands, “But you have to know your mother’s wrong. You’re not deviant. You’re sensational.”

When I look into her eyes, my own wet with tears, I know it’s no use trying to fight it now. I want to care that it’s a bad idea. But when she smiles at me, her eyes soft with sympathy, I’m more than okay with letting her be my downfall.

My mother found out about me and Heather shortly after we started kissing.

When I was little, I used to think my mother was a proxy to God, because she seemed to know everything I did even when she wasn’t around. (Later, I’d realize that I was right, except her eyes and ears were paid to keep track of me instead of being divinely granted.) So, I spent the majority of my childhood terrified to make a wrong move in fear of incurring my mother’s wrath.

Heather was afraid of nothing. It made sense, because next to mine, her family seemed like a bunch of hippies. The Nguyens worked in tech and drove a Prius around, went to brunch and had gay friends, although they never acknowledged them to be. It was always “oh, Mark, he’s… you know.” They were still slightly homophobic, but in the way that creeps up on you, saying that it’s okay if everyone can get married as long as it isn’t their own children. I’ve always wondered if that makes it better or worse.

But her fearlessness made us sloppy. One of the maids found us when she was making her morning rounds, kissing on the bed. She said nothing, just closed the door behind her, but I knew the damage was done. Heather ran out the door. I knew, even before my mother called her family and sent them away, that I’d never see her again.

I don’t tell the group about this, even though I could, because I don’t want Sister Woodhouse to have access to my memories of Heather. To taint them. Instead, I talk about all those years I spent in hiding, before I knew what I was hiding.

“Earlier, I guess, I thought about girls.”

Sister Woodhouse nods approvingly and motions for me to continue, so I say, “My brother, Jason and I, when we were kids… We’d play this game. He’d point to the other girls on the playground and we’d rate them. Say if they were pretty… if they were nice. We said we were picking out his future wife, because he wanted to marry someone I’d approve of, since we were going to spend the rest of our life together. He asked me if I wanted to do the same for the boys, but I didn’t see the appeal. I told him I didn’t need a husband.”

It’s clear that I’ve said too much by the way Sister Woodhouse’s eyes narrow at me. “Can you talk more about your brother, Jason?”

A knot grows in my throat. I realize what I’ve done. I’ve given them access to my greatest weakness. I start to shake my head, but the look in her eyes makes me scared for the alternative, so I say, “He was my twin brother. He died over a year ago.”

“How did he die?” She asks, although I’m sure she already knows. Even if my mother didn’t tell her, the Riverdale Register was filled with articles and think pieces about my father for weeks after he was arrested.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

I see Kevin and Toni preparing to back me up, but Sister Woodhouse doesn’t relent. “I think, Cheryl, that your brother’s murder has had a deeper effect on you than you realize. You remember him liking women, and you want to fill the hole that he left in your life, so you desire them as well. Your brother may very well be the root of your imbalance.”

I want to punch Sister Woodhouse in the throat. I want to tell her that Jason has never been anything but a source of good in my life, the only person who ever truly loved me, that she’s despicable for bringing his death into this. But the knot in my throat won’t stop growing and I can’t quite seem to remember how to breathe.

Toni seems to recognize my agitation, because she raises her hand and says, “Sister Woodhouse, I’d like to share.”

Sister Woodhouse gives an exasperated sigh, but answers, “Yes, Antoinette, what would you like to say?”

“I’ve also had sinful thoughts recently.”

Sister Woodhouse looks pleased with this development, so she motions for her to continue. Toni’s got a rebellious glimmer in her eyes that makes me want to shush her before she gets herself in trouble. “Yeah. Just today, I thought about doing all kinds of sinful things with them.”

“What did you think about that was sinful?” Sister Woodhouse asks.

“Oh, well, I thought about fucking them. I thought about, you know when you’re going down on a girl and her thighs start to shake around your ears?”

Sister Woodhouse is pursing and unpursing her lips, nostrils flared outwards, “Those are very sinful things, Antoinette. The Lord would not approve of you behaving that way.”

Toni smiles, and I make frantic motions under my throat with my hand, hoping that she’ll cut it out, that she’ll save herself, but she ignores me. “The last girl I was with called for the Lord when I was done with her. Has that ever happened to you, Sister Woodhouse?”

Sister Woodhouse’s face has morphed into a terrifying mask of stillness. She moves forward, grabs Toni’s arm, yanks her up and drags her out of the room. The rest of the group is still, shell-shocked. I walk out after them, abandoning all attempts at hiding that Toni means something to me.

The others, thankfully, follow close behind me. Sister Woodhouse is leading Toni outside, to the wide expanse of grass and haybales behind the building. She looks at Toni, her mouth set into an immovable line, and says, “Run. Don’t stop until I tell you to stop.”

Toni, resigned to whatever happens to her, starts running. She runs back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, until her skin is flushed and sopping with sweat. When she inevitably falls, Sister Woodhouse calls out, “faster” and she’s just a blur of a girl in motion again. She runs for what feels like hours. We all stand there, frozen in terror, arms clenched at our sides, watching her go. My chest hurts now, watching her body give up on her, burdened by the knowledge that I can’t do anything for her without making it worse.

Eventually, Sister Woodhouse gets bored and turns around, throwing a “clean yourself up” behind her and walking back inside. The group follows her, everyone except myself, Veronica, and Kevin, who go to Toni. She’s gasping, doubled over, sweat dripping down her brow.

“Are you okay?” Veronica asks, voice shaky, looking like she might cry.

Toni nods, still breathless, and says, “Yeah, Ron. Just… just a little cardio, that’s all.”

It’s clear none of us believe her, because Kevin reaches out to her like she might fall and Veronica starts crying again. Despite her exhaustion, Toni reaches out to Veronica and pulls her into a tight hug, “I’m okay, V, really. I just need to stay here for a bit and catch my breath. Why don’t you and Kevin go inside and get us some plates for dinner? Cheryl will help me inside.”

Secretly I’m flattered that Toni chose to keep me here instead of Kevin, even though she’s known him longer. That is, until I remember that it’s my fault she’s in this position at all.

“You didn’t have to do that for me, Toni.” I say once Veronica and Kevin have disappeared back into the building. Toni doesn’t say anything. Can’t, probably. She just falls downward on her knees out of exhaustion. I sit down next to her in the grass and guide her head down into my lap. Part of me thinks I should check if there are any Sisters around, but when I see how clammy her face looks, I can’t bring myself to care.

We stay there for a while, me running my fingers through the ends of her hair and humming. If I had my sketchbook, I would spend tonight drawing her, working to capture this moment perfectly on paper. Instead, I commit every curve of her face to memory. Eventually, she sits up, and turns to me. She has a strange look on her face, and at first I think she’s going to tell me something urgent, but instead the places a gentle hand on my face and says, “Thank you for being here with me.”

“Anytime.” I answer, and swallow the butterflies in my throat. My eyes dance down to her lips and I see hers dance down to mine. Before I can talk myself out of it, I place a gentle hand at the back of her neck, which is still sticky with sweat, and bring her impossibly close to me, our lips engaged in the sweetest tango.

I don’t know what happened with Heather’s family.

Sometimes, when the days get really unbearable here, I think about her.

I imagine her, gay and unapologetic, making a home in California among the palm trees and sunshine and all that is good. I imagine her mother’s warm smile—I tell myself it’s still directed at her, that her family isn’t mine, could never be. I imagine her meeting a girl at school, a thought which doesn’t burn like it used to, and bringing her home to her family. I imagine her going to Pride in the summer.

I build a better world for her in my mind, and I gift it all to her.

We have made a grave mistake.

I can tell because when we start to walk back inside, Sister Woodhouse is waiting for us at the door, which is bad enough, but she’s not alone. A tall, handsome man is standing beside her in doctor’s clothing, mouth pursed into a thin line.

“Cheryl Blossom. Antoinette Topaz.” Out of his mouth, our names sound like a prison sentence. “Our cameras picked up some concerning behavior from you both.”

The first thing I notice is that Toni looks as scared as I feel. The second thing I notice is that the predatory look in Sister Woodhouse’s eyes has multiplied tenfold, made all the more terrifying by the fact that she makes no move to speak, does not tell us that we’ve sinned, that we’re going to be engulfed in fire for all eternity.

“Doctor.” Toni says, and I remember Veronica’s mention of the doctor—Edgar—who seemed like a serial killer. “I’m sorry. It was my fault, I sinned, Cheryl was just here.”

I realize quickly what she’s trying to do. Take the fall for me. I take a miniscule step forward, “That’s so kind of her to say. Truly, it was my fault, Sister. Ton—Antoinette is much further in her treatment than I am. I fell to my desires. I deeply apologize.”

Edgar’s palm goes up, “It doesn’t matter. Follow me.”

We follow him inside, walking past the cafeteria where the others are eating, gawking at us. When the staircase comes into view, my heart drops into my abdomen. We’re going upstairs.

When my mother found me after Josie left, the drawings of her were still strewn all over my room where Josie dropped them in her rush to get as far away from me as possible. Probably a dozen drawings of her. Of her face. Her lips. Her hands.

She turned to me, rage burning cold in her brown eyes, and picked them up one by one. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I pleaded with her to put them down. In her hands, there were hours upon hours of labor, time spent getting the dark brown of her skin, the curvature of her lips, the softness of her gaze just right.

Once she had them in her hands, she turned away from me and threw them in the fireplace.

“I should have known, Cheryl, that your deviance didn’t stop when that Heather girl got sent away.” My mother growled, stalking towards me like a predator. I tried to move back, which was the wrong move to make, apparently, because my mother lunged towards me, taking my face in her hands. “You are a disgrace to this family.”

The talons of her nails dug into my skin, but I didn’t dare cry out, so instead I bit down on the inside of my cheek as my mother droned on about my deviance, and tried to forget where I was.

I try to do this now. Forget where I am and where I’m going as if it’s already behind me.

If downstairs felt like a prison, upstairs definitely looks like it. On each side of the hallway there are metal doors with a single, small window. As we walk by, I peer in and see the faces of kids with that vacant crater-like stare, melting shadows taking the space of what they once were.

Sister Woodhouse grabs onto my elbow, and Edgar grabs onto Toni’s, and they try to lead us in opposite directions of each other. Toni turns to me, eyes wide and wet with tears, and I can’t help but reach out to her. She shakes her head. This will only make things worse. I mouth ‘I’m sorry’ at her and watch her be led away, the same desperate sinking feeling in my stomach that I had when me and Heather got found out, like I’ll never see her again.

Sister Woodhouse leads me to one of the rooms with the metal doors. Inside there’s a single cot, a few chairs, aand a metal table with some wires that have little attachments like suction cups at the end. When I see the machine that’s attached to them, I think about running, but I have nowhere to go. I’m just too tired to fight this. Sister Woodhouse tells me to lie down, wheels the machine over, and straps my arms and legs down.

She moves forward and turns on a small TV that’s at the base of my bed. I give her a confused stare. “A movie, dear.”

I’m even more confused until she turns the movie on and I see what she’s showing me: flickering images of cheerleaders kissing. Of girls holding hands. They’re trying to create a “natural” aversion to gayness in us, so the only thing we’ll associate it with is pain. I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been. Scared that they’ll fry my brain and I’ll forget about Heather, about Josie, about Toni, until I lose everything, including myself.

Sister Woodhouse puts cotton in my mouth so I won’t bite my tongue.

Immediately there is a blinding pain. Lightning. Burning. Fireworks all over my body, right down to the tips of my fingertips. I feel my arms and legs flail against the restraints. Briefly, I think I’m dying, see the same bright lights I saw when I fell through the ice at Sweetwater River, feel relieved that it’ll finally be over, but then I’m back, struggling again against the electricity.

I try to look around when I hear people talking, but all I can see is the flickering images of girls loving each other. Somewhere, I think I hear my name, but I can’t be sure over the pulsing and buzzing inside me. I close my eyes and try to give in.

I dream of her.

I think they thought they could electrocute the thoughts of her out of me, but it only intensitfies them. In my dream, Toni and I are sitting on the wide expanse of grass behind Thornhill. That’s how I know it’s a dream, because that’s nothing but ash now.

A camera hangs loosely around her neck as she ties daisies together to create a threaded flower crown, which she drapes around my forehead. She places a gentle hand on my forehead when I try to move towards her and steal a kiss, “Stay still.”

Toni walks backwards, and I’m suddenly afraid she’s going to leave me here. Instead, she crouches on the ground and starts photographing me. The trees around me take shape now, seem to move closer to me, a natural frame. Toni is wearing a long white dress, although I don’t know why, because the bottoms of it are getting muddier the more she sits. Eventually, I get impatient, and I start to move towards her.

“You ruined my picture,” She says, although her voice is light.

“You took enough.”

When I look at her, she’s no longer wearing the white dress. Now she’s in her Sisters of Quiet Mercy clothes. I glance down at myself and see that I’m wearing them as well. She starts walking, then doubles back, hand outstretched towards me. I take it, and we start running, away from Thornhill. Suddenly we’re outside the Sisters, and we’re running from that as well.

“Don’t look back.” She says.

But I do. I do look back. Because she’s not running with me any longer, she’s falling behind, and no matter how tightly I grip her hand, I can’t bring her to me, and I’m alone again.

Somebody is standing over me, shaking me. There’s copper in my mouth, and I spit out what’s left of the cotton, now bloody. My body feels sore. It’s like every bone in it has been broken several times over. I manage to sit up, even though my body feels disconnected from myself. My hands go up to my face, to my chest, to the heart that’s pumping much to quickly, just to make sure I’m still there.

“Easy,” The voice above me says, “You might feel nauseous.”

A girl, dressed the same as I am, with matching track marks on her arms, hands me a glass of water. She’s blonde and frail looking, with big, blue eyes, and chapped lips. On the outside one would’ve called her a classic beauty. In here she looks vacant, like all those faces in the windows I saw when I walked through the hallways.

I take the glass and down the water, which tastes like blood when I swallow. “Thank you.”

I look around and notice I’m not in the same room as before. This one looks more like the one I shared with Veronica, except there are two cots instead of beds and it’s otherwise barren and windowless. “Where am I?”

“Your room.” The girl answers, “I’m Betty.”

“Betty. You’re Veronica’s—”

Suddenly the girl’s eyes go wide, “You know Veronica?”

“Yeah. She was my roommate.”

Betty looks desperate, eyes bugged, mouth parted open. I think about how I must look myself, and force my judgement aside. “How is she?”

 _A mess,_ I think, but I know it’s the wrong thing to say, so instead I say, “She’s okay. Everyone looks out for her. She misses you.”

A breath of relief escapes Betty’s lips and she gets this faraway look in her eyes, the kind that the leading actor gets in those movies about war when he goes home to his family. I feel like I’m intruding by looking at her, so I say, “Have you—do you know the other kids here?”

“There are three others. Two boys, they’re roommates. And Toni.”

“Where—Where is she?” I ask, much too quickly, but I can’t bring myself to care. Betty gives me a small smile.

“She’s two doors down. I saw her earlier. After her… treatment. She’s okay. Says she misses you.”

“I miss her too.” I say, and my body lets go of a breath I didn’t know I was holding, “Can I go see her?”

Betty’s lips draw into a tight line, “Not until they’re done with everyone’s treatments. Edgar and the nurses leave around dinnertime. I might be able to sneak you for a few minutes, but we’ll have to be really careful.”

I’m scared to see her. Of what they will do to us if they find out. Of what they have been doing to her, and if she’s surviving it.

When we open the door to Toni’s room, she’s asleep, forehead slick with sweat and bruises already forming around her wrists from where she struggled against the restraints. I inch my way over to her cot and move her hair from her face with my hands. Betty stands guard by the door, clearly trying not to look at us, give us some semblance of privacy.

Toni starts to stir and I hum to her quietly, like I did after Sister Woodhouse made her run herself into the ground, if only to let her know that she’s safe with me. When her eyes open, an unmistakable look takes over her face. It’s gone in a second, replaced with a mixture of desire and devastation, but I still catch it: fear. My lips immediately turn down in sadness.

Toni smiles, “Hey, stranger.”

“Hey yourself.”

Her eyes dart around quickly, and then she kisses me. Even though I was expecting it, the kiss still feels like some sort of revelation. I put all of myself into it, because I don’t know when I’ll see her again, because if anything, I want her to have this kiss to remember that there’s nothing wrong with this, with us, even if our bodies forget.

If it weren’t for Betty’s hands, I could probably convince myself that she’d come out of all this pretty normal, given the circumstances.

Her eyes sometimes gloss over, and she goes somewhere else, but talking to her coaxes her back to earth pretty easily. She talks about how before she came here she was editor in chief of her school newspaper. She gets this misty, faraway look, talking about the typewriter she used and the Blue and Gold room where she and Veronica kissed for the first time.

I learn that they were sent here together. Apparently Betty’s mother and Veronica’s mother were friends when they were in high school, then enemies, then reluctant allies. Veronica moved to Riverdale from New York City her sophomore year and they became immediate best-friends, B&V, forged in fire, a package deal. Their mothers said they were meant to be best-friends, what they themselves could never accomplish.

“She used to say I was the train ride to the rest of her life,” Betty told me, shaking her head softly with affection, “That girl.”

It gives me some hope, that Betty still loves her despite how hard they’ve tried to shock it out of her. Later, in the infinite darkness of our windowless room at night, she’d tell me that although the electroshock therapy did nothing to diminish her feelings for Veronica, she had begun to feel hollowed out. That the shocks didn’t hurt the way they used to and that it scared her. Then she’d clench her hands into tight fists, and I’d pretend not to notice when blood started to seep through her fingers.

I no longer know what day it is. The days blur into nothing but jolts of pain, cotton in my mouth, my body being thrown outside of itself. I think it’s been about four days, but I can’t be sure, because when I’m not being shocked I’m medicated into sleep.

When I’m being shocked, I try to remember the girl I used to be. The perfume that I wore. The way my cheerleading uniform felt on my body. Jason’s warm hands, how he forgot everything, how it felt when he held me. But I can’t stop the TV-static feeling that takes over when the shocks come, where my brain is jolted into nothingness, and I can feel nothing but the darkness that fills me.

At night, Betty tries to coax me back to life, making me share my memories with her. I tell her about Josie and the Pussycats, and the time they let me perform with them at a pep rally. I tell her about the short, red skirts I’d wear to school in the spring. I tell her about the first time I remember seeing snow, when Jason and I ran out of the house to feel it, screaming in the backyard with our arms extended towards the skies, trying to catch snowflakes on our tongues.

We share all of our memories with each other. The old-Cheryl part of me doesn’t want her to know my weaknesses, scared she might suddenly decide to exploit them when the opportunity comes. Mostly, though, I’m just so scared of forgetting myself, because although the shocks have done nothing to cure me of my gayness, I no longer recognize the girl who first arrived here.

One day my body could just stop tolerating all of the electricity. I could forget everything, become not-gay, not-straight, nothing but static.

One night, Kevin bursts into our room. I begin to ask if he’s being moved here, too, but he starts speaking rapidly, “Hey, you two.”

Betty, who was turned on her side in sleep, wakes with a jolt, as if she doesn’t remember where she is. When she sees Kevin, she lunges forward and takes him in a hug, sighing, “Kev.”

“Hey, Betts.” Suddenly, Betty seems to remember something, pulls back from the embrace with a face streaked in panic. Kevin shushes her, “She’s okay. I thought it would be too risky to sneak both of us up here tonight.”

A choked sob tears itself out from Betty’s chest. “Thank God. I can’t do this anymore, Kev.”

He holds her closer, “You don’t have to. We have a plan.”

Betty’s face grows pale with fear, but she swallows, nods for Kevin to continue. He looks around, pulls something shiny out of his pocket, “They’re the keys to the truck. The one Edgar takes on supply runs. If you guys are in, we have to leave tonight, because Edgar and the nuns, except for Woodhouse, are going to be away at some sort of service.”

The plan is to wait until the nuns have left, because Sister Woodhouse and the others are going to have a movie night downstairs. Veronica is going to fake a breakdown, and since Edgar and the others can’t be here to subdue her, Kevin will offer to take her back to her room. Once they’re out, they’ll come upstairs and knock on our door, then on Toni’s. We’ll have to move quick. All we have to do is make it to the end of the long driveway, where the truck is waiting. Once we’re inside, we’ll lock the doors and it won’t matter, because they won’t be able to catch us without a car of their own.

When Kevin’s done explaining the plan, Betty sucks her teeth so hard that I’m worried she’s going to refuse, choose to stay instead of trying to escape again and risk failing. But then she chuckles and says, “About fucking time.”

For once, Betty and I sit in silence, waiting for our freedom to come to us. We put our pillows on the cots under our blankets, drape the sheets around them so that in the dark of the room, if Sister Woodhouse comes to make her rounds, they look like they could be our sleeping bodies. Betty’s clenching her fists tightly, so I sit on her cot with her and let her hold my hand. Even though she squeezes it so tightly my fingers turn red from the lack of circulation, I don’t say a word.

When we hear a knock on our door, we both jump and stay rooted to our cot, until a soft voice carries through the door, “Betty? Cheryl?”

At this, Betty rips her hand out of my grasp. I might be offended if I wasn’t so happy for her. When the door opens, Betty and Veronica are immediately a mess of limbs. They’re both crying, I think, because their shoulders are shaking and they’re whispering things to each other. I think I hear an echo of an ‘I love you’ somewhere in there, but I don’t have time to mull over it because Kevin is guiding us forward. Part of me feels guilty for cutting their reunion short, but mostly I’m glad, because the quicker we get out of here the longer we’ll have freedom.

We move quietly to Toni’s room and knock on her door. When she unlocks it, I immediately take her hand and pull it towards me. She’s startled at first. I realize that she might’ve not been expecting it. Then she grabs me aand kisses me hard enough that it hurts a little bit, but not in a bad way, rather in the way that cuts through the static and reminds me I’m still real. I kiss her back for what feels like forever, but not long enough, and then she’s crying and so am I.

Everything is silent as we walk through the house, although faintly I can hear echoes of a movie coming out of the rec room, which allows us to slip out of the building. Once we’re outside, we’re running, faster than I’ve ever run before, my sore bones pushed forward by the promise of freedom. The mud in the forest cakes itself under the soles of my shoes, but I don’t stop running, don’t let go of Toni’s hand.

When we get to the car, Kevin immediately unlocks it and the rest of us stumble into the backseat. We lock the doors. In the rearview mirror, I see Sister Woodhouse walking towards us, but I smile anyways because I know she’s too late.

We’ve been driving for about twenty minutes, way over the speed limit and without any particular destination in mind, before any one of us is able to do anything other than breathe. It’s Kevin who laughs first. Big, wracking, desperate laughter that moves his entire body so abruptly that I’m almost scared he’s going to lose control of the truck.

Then the rest of us start laughing too. We look at each other and laugh so hard that Kevin has to pull over on the side of the road and let us hold our pained ribs for about five minutes. We know nobody will bother trying to find us. We’re just unknown gay kids whose bodies have done what our parents always wanted us to do—disappear.

Yet, for what is perhaps the first time in my entire life, I’m completely free.

Toni suddenly leans forward, turns on the stereo to some pop radio station. When I realize what song is playing, I burst out into laughter again, then song. The others join in too, singing at the top of our lungs, “I'm beautiful in my way, 'cause God makes no mistakes, I'm on the right track, baby I was born this way…”

Eventually, the sun starts to rise and I am comforted by the fact that there’s miles and miles between us and the place we left behind. Someday, we’ll come back, and we’ll burn that place to the ground, make things right for all those hollowed-out kids who are still there.

But for now I allow myself to imagine my own future, one where I’m holding Toni’s hand, running through the sunlight and chased only by waves, not crying, yet, but laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> honestly i thought i left this fandom behind for good because riverdale is quite literally on crack now, but i just had to write this long ass choni angst extravaganza. 
> 
> if you enjoyed it, pretty please leave a review because i poured my heart and soul into this.


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